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I have a question about the following sentence fragment.

その巨体は残り少ない緑と僅かばかりの生物を食い荒らし

Context: It's talking about a gigantic sand worm thing, that is in process of trying to eat someone. It's living in a desert with scarce greenery and life.

What I'm wondering about is the

僅かばかりの生物

I'm wondering whether 僅かばかりの means little, as in small creatures, or could it mean more along the lines of really scarce animals, since those would be more rare than scarce greenery. I'm also assuming that ばかり is here just to intensify 僅か.

I'm asking because small animals would not really gel with later comments about them devolving to cannibalism in case food is missing and it's currently trying to devour whole a human. So I don't know if this is the writer making a mistake or me.

user3856370
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4th Dimension
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1 Answers1

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わずか never means small size. It always means "scarce" (small quantity) or "slight" (small degree). And yes, in this case ばかり intensifies how scarce 生物 are.

naruto
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